Dragon Bonsai March visit

As Sandra has mentioned Chris Thomas chairman of Dragon Bonsai had organised a two day event called Bonsai the Celtic way, this was a new concept with a series of speakers on Bonsai their way.Read more>>

On day one we had a demonstration of silk carving given by Gerry this involves a more involved way of peeling back fibres bit by bit to give more detailed highs and lows than normally seen when carving with a power tools. You were invited up to have a go yourself on his tree.

Gerry silk carving

Manual and Malcolm also gave a demonstration of air layering, this technique I have found vary useful in the past to gain more and/or better material from what can be a poor tree to begin with. These two are well worth seeing as a double act.

The double act

John Pitt brought to the event two fabulous trees his Blackthorn which was in flower

Blackthorn in flower

and my favourite a raft style Hawthorn.

Hawthorn raft style

He described who he managed to create the wonderful ramification in the Hawthorn and his way of producing dead wood on material.

The second day there was a general discussion on various pieces and what options there were to improve them, Simon Temblett joined on the Sunday and he brought in a Hawthorn which he described how he had been refining for some years, he also gave a talk on his method of dead wood on trees.

John Pitt gave a very informative talk on the type of pot and colour selection for your Bonsai.

John on pot selection

Each day ended with a question and answer session, what was so informative was that these people were all drawing on thier experiances with Bonsai over many years and what had worked for them.

As I had not entered any trees I was asked to help judge the catagories as in best tree, yamadori home grown, and garden center material I add pictures below.

Three winning tree,s

This was a brilliant two days and I congratulate Chris for trying out this format as it was full of advice with plenty of good humour thrown in.